The French Navy has decided to withdraw the armed anti-piracy teams it has deployed on board French tuna vessels operating in waters around the Seychelles for the past few years.
‘The Prime Minister has decided to end to this operation, given the decline in piracy in the Indian Ocean and the new legislation on the protection of French-flagged vessels,’ announced Admiral Christophe Prazuck of the French navel staff.
The anti-piracy scheme was initiated in 2009, when attacks were spreading off the coast of Somalia, and pirates were becoming increasingly active further offshore. French tuna vessels were particularly easy targets for their fishing operations.
The Seychelles-based operation was set up with squads of marines, commandos or trained personnel from other units embarking on fishing vessels for generally two-month deployments, both on tuna vessels and on seismic ships operating off the African coast, with approximately a hundred military personnel on fifteen vessels while the operation was at its height.
Thirteen French vessels carried anti-piracy units in 2015, but this year the number fell to only seven as one tuna seiner, Torre Giulia, was reflagged to Italy and Sapmer opted to replace military protection with personnel supplied by a private security provider for its five French-flagged vessels and four others flagged in Mauritius and the Seychelles. Saupiquet had already re-deployed its tuna fleet to the Atlantic, leaving just seven CFTO purse seiners carrying anti-piracy squads in the Indian Ocean.
In the initial years, a number of attacks were repulsed, even with pirates attacking using rocket launchers.
The threat has receded, according to naval sources, largely due to the energetic measures taken by naval forces of several countries off the Horn of Africa, combined with efforts made by vessel operators to make conflicts and subsequent ransom demands more difficult.
The threats from pirates are judged to still exist, but French law has been changed with the passing of legislation enabling operators to use private security providers. The first of these started sailing with fishing vessels last year, which has allowed the military to redeploy its teams elsewhere.
